to Miss Ferrier

La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, Var, [March 22, 1884].

MY DEAR MISS FERRIER,—Are you really going to fall us?  This seems a dreadful thing.  My poor wife, who is not well off for friends on this bare coast, has been promising herself, and I have been promising her, a rare acquisition.  And now Miss Burn has failed, and you utter a very doubtful note.  You do not know how delightful this place is, nor how anxious we are for a visit.  Look at the names: ‘The Solitude’—is that romantic?  The palm-trees?—how is that for the gorgeous East?  ‘Var’? the name of a river—‘the quiet waters by’!  ’Tis true, they are in another department, and consist of stones and a biennial spate; but what a music, what a plash of brooks, for the imagination!  We have hills; we have skies; the roses are putting forth, as yet sparsely; the meadows by the sea are one sheet of jonquils; the birds sing as in an English May—for, considering we are in France and serve up our song-birds, I am ashamed to say, on a little field of toast and with a sprig of thyme (my own receipt) in their most innocent and now unvocal bellies—considering all this, we have a wonderfully fair wood-music round this Solitude of ours.  What can I say more?—All this awaits you.  Kennst du das Land, in short.—Your sincere friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.